Arts and Sciences
The Cultural Arts Often referred to as A&S, the Arts and Sciences are the cultural aspect of the HFS. What are they? Examples are crafts, armor-making, weapon-building, fine arts, and writing. Promoting A&S is one of the responsibilities of the Regent. Everything you see on the field, was typically made, or purchased by the player from another artisan. A person who excells in the areas of Arts and Sciences might eventually be honored with a Masterhood. Art & Sciences Tourneys A&S events include cultural tourneys of many kinds and workshops. A&S competition is an important part of Quals. Some category examples: *Accessory Entries; Court Accessories, Field (Or Fighting) Accessories. *Armoring Entries; Bracers, Greaves, breats plates, Chain mail, Leather, Laminar, *Artwork Entries; 2-D and 3-D. *Banner Entires; Can be combined with Sewing, 2-D art, Passive construction, or Accessory. *Bardic Performances; Singing, Oratory, Instrumental, Dance. *Brewing Entries; Sometimes combined with cooking; Mead, Wines, beers. These do not have to be Alcoholic. *Cooking Entries; Appetizer, Main Course, Dessert, Vintner, and Writing. *Construction Entries; Passive, Active. *Garbing Entries; Fighting, Court, Other Outfits, Monster, Accessory, Favors, and Jewelry. *Photography Entries; Usually combined with 2-D Art. *Sewing Entries often combined with garbing entries, but can include Quilts, Banners, Tents, and Bags. *Rose Entries Anything that is made specifically for donation to the club. *Weapon Smithing; Sword, Shield, Polearms. *Writing Entries; Factual, Fictional, Poetry, Publications How to run an Arts and Sciences tourney As the person who runs a tournament it is your job to advertise in advance, as much as reasonably possible. Most experienced entrants will plan their entries around the method on which the tourney will be judged. You must advertise the following; The date, the time sign ins will start, the time sign ins will end, what style of tourney you plan to have, a listing of the categories, and what is permissible to enter, any limits on number of entries or number per category, And how the entries will be scored. Choose judges a head of time, and nail them down again two weeks prior to the tourney to make sure they are still available, or if you need to find replacements. Make sure that your judges understand that telling you that they can't make it is fine, but that they need to tell you. Bring extra paper, sign ins, and lots and lots of pens to the tourney. Judging Methods There are three main scoring methods; Tourney style, Flood Style, Limited entry and Top three. These each of them have variations, but generally follow the same structure. The most common style of Judging Arts and Sciences by a pool of the HFS Kingdoms is the 'Top Three' style. Basically each contestant is allowed to enter as many items into the tourney as they like, but only the top scores, or score, is taken from each category and awarded points. Sometimes in the over all scores extra points are granted for taking first or second place in category. Other times the numerical score is simply added and compared to that of all the other contestants to determine the over-all winner. Flood style was often used in the past but has generally fallen out of favor. In this style the entrant is given points for each entry which entry that scores above a certain level is is given a point. This generally favors people who enter the largest amount of entries. The rarest major style in use as the tourney style. Structured like a fighting tourney, each entry is pitted against each other a winner is chosen by the judges and moves into the next round. The outcome is generally random, but is still used for special tourneys. 'Example Scoring and Judging : ' This event will be scored on a BTA (Better than average) 3.5 system. Ideally, the competitors will have diverse talents and score well. The object of this scoring system is to keep people from winning the cultural tournament by flooding one category or entering a lot of poor quality entries in order to increase their score. The cultural winner will be the person with the highest combined score from entries that meet the following requirements; only the entrant’s two best entries in any given category will count towards their overall score. Entries that achieve a score that is a 3.5 or lower will not count towards the entrant’s overall score. Only scores OVER 3.5 count. Scoring Systems Most Kingdoms use a best of 5 scoring system. 3.5 being an average score and 5.0 being the best you can achieve. Points are added and deducted for merit; usually in by increments of 0.5. Comments on Judging: There are many styles of judging, styles of tournaments, and they all have their pro's and cons. There are the tournaments that are best in show, I.E. the single best item wins. I could make one hell of a Jello Shot and beat out a wedding dress. It may not be fair, but the scores don't lie, especially since we don't have "Difficulty rating" points associated to items its all subjective. There is also the "shot gun" style tournament, enter as many different items into as many different categories, and the person with the most aggregate points at the end wins. What does this mean? An artist who takes 1st place in 3 categories, Armor Construction, Court Garb, and hell Bardic could be beaten by someone who took 3rd place in Armor, Court Garb, Bardic, Fighting Garb, Brewing, Cooking, Heraldry, etc., So is it better to excel in a few mediums or place 'moderate' in multiple? Depending on the size of the tournament, and the number of judges you might end up with using from a large pool of judges, it would be good to have enough judges who knew enough about all the mediums of Arts and Science to be effective, and not enter into the tournament, but generally it is those who do partake in Arts and Sciences and enter the tournaments who are unfortunately also best qualified to judge. It would be good for the judges to have honor and request an alternate to judge any peice they entered, but at the same time there is just as much bias shown either positive or negative for friends, family members, beltline. Category:Combined Realms Customs